There is only so far you can go competing with teenagers in node/js space - pick a different tech stack for the future.

I'm 40 and also a JS developer for many years after using C++ and other stacks before that. From what I can tell Node.js and JavaScript stopped being cool for many young people like a few years ago when they got onto Go and other stuff.

Maybe the trend is web assembly with Rust now or something. Or Ethereum contracts and R are cool. I dunno but trends do matter.

Anyway JavaScript is less trendy but still very popular and there are a ton of crap codebases built up over recent years. So any of those that don't get scrapped for a trendier technology will be looking to recruit experienced people to fix up their crap (maybe adding TS declarations for everything or something like that).

On the contrary, there is only so far younger people can go competing in the node/js space with people who have gone through SICP. Higher order functions are everywhere.

When JS stops reimplementing Unix tools or stuff from the Bell ATT labs from before you were born, I'd start getting worried. The fundamentals are important, when you get into anything more complex than slapping crud apps together. Witness the monstrosities birthed by JS "programmers" that have never slung pointers, or been acquainted with tree operations, or think MVC was birthed with Web 2.0.

LOL... of course you can build crap in any platform/language. On the flip side, look at what Walmart and Netflix have accomplished with JS, which is a far cry from the monstrosities bemoaned. It's not all simple, because it's a relatively easy and flexible language to start with.